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UN Confirms Secret Probe of Tutsi War Crimes - International Justice - Global Policy Forum UN Confirms Secret Probe of Tutsi War Crimes
National Post
December 15, 2000
A UN court probing the 1994 genocide in Rwanda will indict Tutsi army officers for the first time, says the world body's chief war crimes prosecutor. Carla Del Ponte now admits a secret investigation into Tutsi atrocities has been underway for a year -- confirming an exclusive National Post story in February uncovering the probe.
Until now, prosecutors of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) have indicted only Hutus and one European who collaborated with Hutus in the genocide. Any investigation of crimes committed by Tutsi soldiers has been resisted by the mainly Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a former rebel army that overthrew the genocidal Hutu-led government in 1994 and still holds power. Now Paul Kagame, the former rebel commander and current Rwandan President, has authorized co-operation with ICTR prosecutors in the investigation of Tutsis, said Ms. Del Ponte.
The move suggests a thaw in relations between the Rwandan government and the ICTR, which chilled late last year after a UN appeals court ordered a Hutu genocide suspect released because of prosecutorial bungling. But some Rwandan analysts suspect Mr. Kagame is giving ground to the tribunal only because he has been assured the prosecutors will limit their probe.
An investigation involving the RPF chain of command -- which Mr. Kagame heads -- is not expected, at least in the short term. Although indictments of Tutsis are possible within a year, Ms. Del Ponte said she will "go step by step" when asked what she will do if faced with evidence implicating Mr. Kagame in atrocities.
A source linked to the ICTR told the National Post for the February article: "The tribunal is not going for the big fish right away. We will see the odd captain or lieutenant in the first batch. The senior members of the Rwandan government will give them up if they feel that the tribunal will be content with a few small fry and leave the rest of them alone."
The UN has not said much about RPF atrocities, and refused to release a report that sources said revealed RPF soldiers had slaughtered as many as 45,000 Hutus as they fought their way to Kigali, the Rwandan capital. The figure pales in comparison to the 500,000 to 800,000 Tutsi civilians hacked, shot and stabbed to death by Hutus, encouraged by the country's politically extremist Hutu leaders during three months of genocide in 1994.
Because the UN Security Council created the ICTR to investigate all war crimes in Rwanda in 1994, lawyers defending accused Hutus say the tribunal has been selective in dispensing justice.
Speaking at ICTR headquarters in Arusha, Tanzania, Ms. Del Ponte said she and Mr. Kagame had met behind closed doors sometime within the past week. The get-together occurred to discuss "investigations that we opened last year into the massacres by, let us say, the other side. That is, by soldiers of the Rwandan army," she explained. "I am entirely satisfied with the results of this meeting in the sense that we managed to get full collaboration, even for these investigations."
Ms. Del Ponte admitted Mr. Kagame has the power to end the investigation of Tutsi crimes at any moment, but said her understanding with the Rwandan leader is an important first step. "Especially for these investigations, if you don't have the co-operation of the authorities of the country, it's impossible to get anywhere," she said. "I need to get access to documents and ... witnesses in Rwanda."
Of the 51 people indicted by the ICTR, only a few have been tried because administrative inefficiencies and other problems have delayed the proceedings. Two African countries are protecting some indicted suspects, said Ms. Del Ponte, who named neither the suspects nor the countries.
On March 1, a second exclusive Post article revealed the existence of hidden UN documents containing uncorroborated information linking Mr. Kagame to the 1994 assassination of Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana, a Hutu whose death triggered the already planned genocide. The information, gathered by former ICTR investigators, suggests Mr. Kagame ordered the missile attack on the plane carrying the then-president back to Rwanda from a peace summit.
Ms. Del Ponte repeated the official ICTR line denying such an investigation had ever been opened. But she said her office was co-operating with a French inquiry into the downing of the plane, which had a French crew. "Its results will allow me to decide if the Office of the Prosecutor should open an inquiry itself" into the incident, she said. "I think that at the beginning of next year, we will finally be able to produce a decision, giving our reasons."
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